The court of the king Mathias Korvin was a strong European humanistic center, to which the Croats gave a deep imprint. Thus the tutor of Mathias Korvin was Ivan Vitez (1405-1472), a Croatian Latinist, who also had the merit to open the University of Bratislava (capital of Slovakia) and the Academy and library of Budim (part of today’s Budapest). He was a cardinal and occupied the position of the king’s chancellor. In his speech in Vienna he asked for help to stop the penetration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire to Croatian lands.